Nice post today from John Micek at the Morning Call, who notes that for a guy who talked so much about reforming Harrisburg while on the campaign trail there was little to show for it in Tom Corbett's budget address yesterday.

We all know by now how Corbett wants to slash education funding -- by $80 million in Pitt's case alone -- but the people he regularly crucified on the trail were hardly scratched Tuesday. He cut the House appropriation from $183.5 million this year to $180.4 million next year, and the Senate's from $92 million to $91 million. He writes:

The absence of hardcore talk of government reform, where Corbett made his reputation as attorney general with the Bonusgate public corruption investigation, raised eyebrows among good government advocates on Wednesday.

Also writing along those lines was Corbett Enemy #1, CasablancaPa. Remember that blood-boiling grand jury report issued last May, describing the bloated legislative budgets, pay and per-diems received by Republicans and Dems alike? And how the General Assembly was "utterly incapable" of reforming itself?

Says Casablanca:

Since there's so much excess, unnecessary spending going on in the legislature, and the state is in such financial trouble, and Corbett you'd be pretty sure our budget-cutting governor would propose a sizeable reduction in the legislature's allocation.

Right?

As exactly no one seemed to notice, Corbett proposed cutting legislative spending by approximately ZERO PERCENT.

Below is the attack ad the Corbett camp released in August on the subject, in which he matched his no-tax pledge (certainly evident Tuesday) with his fervor for reforming (literally) cigar-filled-rooms. He says, "When I announced my pledge that as governor I would oppose all new tax increases, the response from the politicians was quite predictable. . . The politicians were just as skeptical when I promised to fight corruption in Pennsylvania, and boy, were they wrong."